Peace: A Shippou the Wanderer Tale
by IronRaven
Summary: Shippou remember's his grandson, and a link to his childhood. Part of a series of diary entries during the modern era by an older Shippou, starting with Beginning's End. And there is a suprise for the observant, can anyone find it?


Peace   
A Shippou the Wanderer Tale   
by IronRaven   
  
Disclaimer: Shippou and the others are the property of Rumiko Takahashi-sama. This is a divergent timeline, in which they slowly become other people. Kitsumori Hoono and Karushiken-sensai are mine as result, sorta. 

--- 

In the West, there is a term, "deja vu." Remembering that which you have never experienced. When you must die, and be reborn, you get used to that feeling. As someone nearly immortal and hiding among mortals, it is part of surviving. 

One of my human patients has a brain tumor. It's too big, too deep, we can't take it out. He complains about forgetting things, which is normal. The pain he feels is because the tumor is slowly eating parts of his brain, and it makes his nerves misfire. No drugs can block all the pain, just like no drugs can help him remember the past he has lost. 

He's growing scared. He had nearly adjusted to his inevitable death. He's stopped the treatment with his oncologist, so it's up to me, his general practitioner, to keep track of the unavoidable. But that started to change a few weeks ago. He started having dreams about things that hadn't happened yet, and then they started to happen. Now, he is scared again. 

I know how he feels. I wish I could tell him I've "died" before, many times. But even if I could, it would not bring him much comfort. He is dying because of bad luck. I've died to protect myself. 

But sometimes I've died to protect others. Or my mission. 

--- _mid summer, in the year 1851 of the Western calendar_

Living as a farmer, one does not normally wake up to having your door pounded on. Opening my eyes, I fumbled for my clothes and stumbled to the door. The person who was banging at the door must not have noticed as I shouted I was coming. Or that the door was opening. So, the next thing they banged their fist on was my forehead. I hate being short. 

"Father, Father. Come, look." A hand reached out, strong and hard from a life of work, encircling my wrist. 

Ah, Kotou, my son, his human mother three years in the grave. Really, I got started late in life. I was over three hundred when he was born. I had always been glad that he looked almost perfectly human, except for the red hair he got from me, and slightly pointy teeth. 

Sniffing the air carefully, I couldn't smell smoke, nor blood. "Kotou, can it not wait until the sun rises?" 

"Only if you want to miss your grandson's birthday." 

_Grandson..._ "It's Sora's time? But she's early. She has another month." Early births are never a good sign. Too often, the child is not ready, and dies. Even when they are, they remain small for their entire lives. I should know. And more often than is normal, the mother also dies. 

Protecting, that had been the reason for my existence for so many decades. That a member of my kin could be in danger pulled me into a run, my son right behind me. It took me a moment to realize he was laughing. 

"Father, it is ok. The birthing is done. They are resting." He moved past me, turning on the village's lane towards his own home. "And I can still out run you!" 

Kotou, named after the warrior who served Inutaisho and his son, had had no trouble learning to crawl. Or run, and he used to run me ragged when he was a tiny child. As a full grown man with his own child, he was going to need that. But twenty years isn't that long for a demon, not enough to have slowed me any. New children are a reason to celebrate, to be joyous, especially when the first born is a boy. We raced to his home, where a lamp burned. 

Inside, I could still smell the traces of the birthing, and something else. Swathed in blankets, a little boy lay in his mother's arms, a shock of already unruly red hair on his head. But there was something else in the air. Something familiar, but from a long time ago.... 

"Father, I want you to meet Shinta. Shinta, this is your chichi's chichi." Taking the boy from my daughter-in-law, Kotou introduced me to my grandson. The bright eyes, so young but already taking in the world around them, brought a smile to my lips, even as my heart skipped a beat. I could now remember where I had last smelt that smell. 

_Inuyasha._

---_modern times, Kitsumori-san at his desk_

The Kami have a sense of humor. I became my own great-grandfather that night. Shinta's spirit was unmistakably that of Inuyasha. I loved and cherished him, the first born of my only son. He had been a good boy, strong for his size, and smart, but caring and kind. And free of everything that held him back inside before, when I had known him as Inuyasha. But every so often, something would cause a flame to burn within. He could always retain control of that flame, even if he clung to that control only by his fingertips. Every day, I ached to tell him who he had been, to thank him for looking after me when I was as little as he was then. But I couldn't. It would confuse him, scare him. And maybe even given my true self away. 

In time, it came time for me to go away. At nearly 50 years old, I had barely seemed to age. Today, that might not draw notice, but then, for a farmer, it could. And it was starting to. So, I used the first chance I had to leave, without creating a mystery. Cholera came to that village, and I was one of it's victims. 

It actually did make me sick, but I did survive to find my uncle who was then going by the name of Karushiken, and teaching scholarly subjects in a dojo. Sneaking out of one's grave is never easy, but I had had long practice. It took less than a month to make my way south to Kyushu, and next to no time to convice Sesshomaru's employer that I could be of service. 

I have often wondered what became of Shinta. History lost his name, I never found anyone who had a record of his fate. I had to leave, to protect him, even though he was about the same age he had been when he was orphaned as Inuyasha. That has nagged me since, the doubting fear that I may have abandoned him. I can only hope he lived a normal life, rather than dieing young, and that wasn't one of the many hanyou and youkai murdered by one side or the other during the Meiji's return to power. I pray he found his mate, so that they could be together. So that they could have the peace they could never have before. 

--- 

Author's notes:   
So, we see a little of Shippou... Sorry, Hoono's past coming together. 

A virtua-cookie to the first person who can tell me the joke. (And Sabbie-chan, you are disqualified. We've talked about this one.) 


End file.
